I was referring to residential wiring, here in Alberta. I am not too sure on how
wiring is done any place else. In a main panel in a house here the ground, or
bare, wire is connected to a connector bar on one side of the panel. The main
ground wire of this bar is grounded out somewhere up the line. Buried somewhere
underground or something like that. The neutral, or white, wire is goes to a
connector bar on the other side of the panel. The main wire off of this bar goes
up the line and is looked after by the utility co. The power feed is connected to
either side of your panel as two 110 leads. When you jump across both sides you
get 220. One side gives you 110. When wiring in your house, the bare ground wire
and the white neutral wire do not get connected at the same point and therefore
are not tied together.
A 30 amp service has a ground a neutral and a hot wire. A 50 amp service has a
ground a neutral and two hot wires. Your ground, when hooked up to shore power is
made through your plug. The 50 amp service will supply two sides of your panel
with 110 each. This will give you 220, if the service is 220, when you jump across
both sides. The 30 amp service will give you 110 to your panel. This can be split
in two, the way the Onan is done, to feed both sides but when you jump across you
will not have 220. The 40 or 50 amp service will allow you to run two AC's and the
30 will let you run 1.
> In a message dated 7/1/99 1:31:43 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
>
>
>
> Subject: What does an electrical service look like?
> There are logically four wires involved with supplying the
> main panel with power. Three of them will come from the utility
> pole, and a fourth (bare) wire comes from elsewhere.
> The bare wire is connected to one or more long metal bars pounded
> into the ground, or to a wire buried in the foundation,
> One of the other wires will be white (or black with white or
> yellow stripes, or sometimes simply black). It is the neutral wire.
> It is connected to the "centre tap" (CEC; "center tap" in the
> NEC ;-) of the distribution transformer supplying the power. It
> is connected to the grounding conductor in only one place (often
> inside the panel). The neutral and ground should not be connected
> anywhere else.
> The other two wires will usually be black, and are the "hot"
> wires. They are attached to the distribution transformer as well.
> The two black wires are 180 degrees out of phase with each
> other. This means if you connect something to both hot wires,
> the voltage will be 220 volts. If you connect something to the
> white and either of the two blacks you will get 110V.
> Some panels seem to only have three wires coming into them.
> This is either because the neutral and ground are connected
> together at a different point (eg: the meter or pole) and one
> wire is doing dual-duty as both neutral and ground, or in some
> rare occasions, the service has only one hot wire (110V only
> service).
>
> My GMC is still at Buskirks waiting for the engine replacement to be finished
> so I do not have the GMC manual to look
at.but since we all don't drive a
> ground rod into the earth when we park our motorhomes, I expect that the box
> in the motorhome may just put the green wire to chassis ground but the
> neutral wire would not go to ground. This can be checked on the GMC wiring
> diagram. This would only apply to the 50 amp service. The 30 amp (Royales?)
> would not have the ground wire.
>
> Emery Stora
> 77 Kingsley
> Santa Fe, NM
- --
Darren Paget
76 Experimental
Another Fab Day
paget
atrick
